How context improves the effectiveness of your creative.

In this part of our sales funnel series, we’re addressing the influence creative has on your advertising…and the influence the context has over your creative.

The creative process is vastly different for each platform you’re using. Unless your visuals and messaging line up with whom you’re speaking with, what need your product addresses, where they are in their customer journey, what platform they are currently on and why they should even be interested, then you’re probably wasting a ton of money in advertising spend, only to have a large majority of your creative fall on deaf ears.

There is a quote from a very famous marketer named Gary Vaynerchuk that goes “If content is king, then context is god” and I think that quote reigns very true when it comes to advertising or marketing your ecommerce brand using today’s platforms like Facebook and Google, especially when we have the ability to show different messages to different audiences based on how they’ve interacted (or not interacted) with your existing content or website.

Having a keen understanding of how your audience interacts with your site, and then speaking to that in your creative, adds a lot of context that can make someone ultimately make the decision to buy your product. This type of data-driven creative is what most good marketers use to properly construct their sales funnels. In fact, on average, good contextual retargeting ads are 76% more likely to be clicked on and cost considerably less than a cold traffic ad. So here are three ways that you can add much needed context to your creative and messaging.

Create ads that overcome objections – If most visitors to your site make a purchase within 24 hours of their first visit, you may want to run remarketing ads that are targeted to people who have visited your product page within the last 48 hours and did not convert (see audiences section above). Use testimonials or any other type of content that adds additional value and/or speaks to the 2-3 most common hesitations people have before buying the product. This a great way to sell on value and answer questions that they probably had in the first place. This not only adds value and improves consumer experience, but also shows that you actually understand your customer.

Create ads that stagger promotions – Using promotions that entice buyers with limited time offers is nothing new. However, using various promotions based on the context of what a visitor engaged with or has done on your site is a practice that is fairly new and can really have a profound effect on your sales. For instance, serving an ad that has a limited time promo to people who added a product to the cart but, for whatever reason, did not convert will entice them to continue with the purchase. And for those people that made it all the way to the checkout page but did not convert you can serve them with a separate ad with an even stronger promotion. Ultimately, by staggering the promotions based on how “hot” the prospect is, your marketing will lead to more sales and higher margins.

Create ads that speak to people who’ve already purchased – What if I told you that it’s ⅔ less expensive to convert an existing customer than it is to convert cold traffic? For many types of businesses, the same person can convert multiple times. They already know and trust your brand and typically require less ‘selling’ than a new prospect. However, post-purchase retargeting is one of the most overlooked parts of a solid ad system. In fact, setting up a simple ‘thank you’ video that is served up to product purchasers at the time they should’ve received the product can be very powerful.